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By David Futrelle
The idea that women secretly, or not so secretly, want to be raped isn’t exactly a new idea, and it’s one that remains popular among the sort of men who think that rape laws are just too damn strict.
So it’s hardly surprising to find a post on Return of Kings asserting that “Feminists are hysterical about rape because no man wants to rape them.” RoK is, after all, a site presided over by the infamous Roosh Valizadeh, a man whose pickup guides seem an awful lot like how-tos for date rape.
What is perhaps a little unexpected is to see how much energy the post’s author, one Len Goddard, puts into concocting an evo psych justification for this nonsense notion.
Goddard starts off by asserting that feminists who talk and worry a lot about rape don’t do so because rape is common — he offers some dubious stats, unsourced of course, as “proof” that it is quite rare. No, the real reason
these types are adamant about manufacturing stories about sexual assault and rape is because they are trying to prove they are desirable. It plays to their ego to think that there might be some testosterone-fuelled barbarian out there who would find her suitable enough for a forced session. These women want to punish men not because of a fear of being attacked, but due to a bitterness of not being approached, considered, acknowledged, and on the more extreme scale … not being a target for forced sex.
So far he has not gotten beyond a popular antifeminist insult, frequently pulled out of a hat by misogynistic men losing arguments online, suggesting that feminists are all “too ugly to get raped.” (Indeed, later in the post Goddard, clearly thinking himself very clever, literally suggests to his readers that they use this rather threadbare insult on any feminists who challenge their misogyny.)
But before he gets to that point Goddard decides to tell a little evo psych “just so” story in an attempt to prove that feminists are indeed too ugly to get raped, and that this fact makes feminists feel very bad.
In fact, as Goddard sees it, getting raped by “some testosterone-fuelled barbarian” alpha male is basically a “biological imperative” for human females.
“Let’s rewind to the days of Vikings, global conquests, and crusades, where raping and pillaging were common,” Goddard writes, taking us back in time to what he seems to imagine was some sort of rapey golden age (and one with a decidedly Northern European feel to it).
When these Vikings or raiders would invade, they would indiscriminately rape the women. Now, as brutal and as terrifying as it was, this helped these women indirectly fulfill their biological imperative—which is to pass on the strongest genes possible to her offspring. These genes were forced upon them by the, proven, bigger, stronger, smarter men who likely just decimated the local men of breeding age.
In other words, the Viking rapists were not only giving these women what they secretly really wanted, at least in Goddard’s mind; they were infusing the cultures they invaded with their superior genetic material, uplifting the entire human race by making better (white) babies.
Some of the Vikings’ rape victims, he writes, were kidnapped and “absorbed into the tribes of the invaders where they likely had long and successful—biologically speaking—breeding lives.” As Goddard sees it, these were the lucky ones; the rest were left behind to fend for themselves.
Contemporary feminists are even less lucky, Goddard argues.
“Fast forward back to today,” he continues.  The “feminists and fat women (undesirables)” in contemporary society are essentially
the equivalent of the low-born and peasant women of yester-year. But those ancient women would have still had exposure to top-tier men—the best genetics–whether it was consensual or not (not).
Forget the emotional and physical trauma of rape; in Goddard’s twisted imagination rape was a good thing for these women and the human race in general, an opportunity for “low-born” women to have “exposure to top-tier men” and their golden sperm. In his scenario, the problem faced by contemporary feminists isn’t that they get raped; it’s that they don’t get raped often enough.
Today’s undesirables don’t have that “option,” if we can call it that. Do you think the likes of Chris Hemsworth or Brad Pitt are lining up to fuck a woman like Lena Dunham? Never in a million years.
It’s always about Brad Pitt for these guys, huh? I think he’s a bit old for Lena Dunham, who I rather suspect has little trouble finding dates.
Top-tier-women of today are the only women who get exposure to the top-tier-men. Fatties and feminists cannot fulfill their biological imperatives directly (seducing a top-tier man) or indirectly (being raped by an aggressive, dominant man).
Today’s sexual marketplace is discriminate against the laziness and repulsiveness of fat women and feminists whereas the sexual marketplace of the invading hordes was indiscriminate, driven only by raging emotions and carnal urges.
Despite the utter awfulness of the views he’s espousing here, it is sort of cute that Goddard and the rest of the losers associated with Return of Kings see themselves as being “top-tier” anything.
Goddard continues by asserting that feminism is little more than a cry of “sour grapes!” from sexually frustrated women who hate “the male-feminist, soy-boy-cucks who orbit them” and long for the sort of macho lady-hating dude who thinks the Vikings were super-cool because they raped so many women.
In order for these unfortunate ladies to escape their misery, Goddard argues, they will need to abandon feminism and “embrace the lives that will lead them to the men they want, and therefore, the lives they want.” Only then will they be able to “command the respect of a good man.”
The writers at Return of Kings wouldn’t know a good man if he punched them in the face.
I would bet quite an amount of money that they are the kind of guy I have to not laugh at on the gym. Too heavy weights, the sloppiest of forms, skipping leg day and not cleaning up after themselves.
My favourite is to this day the guy with an honest to god gold chain around his neck, in a wife beater, with a 70s porn stache. On the big pull machine, grunting, dropping the weight stacks with a resounding clang on every rep because they were way too heavy. I had to go hide in the changing room. It was lovely.
As for the uh…. Insights offered: the stupid, it buuuuuurns!
The word ‘rape’ was not always used to mean sexual assault- earlier usages of the word have it meaning “to loot or rob or carry off”- i.e. basically stealing possessions. And Vikings (or, the people that now are referred to as Vikings) did seem to historically do a lot of that.
Can’t help but wonder if these dudes have misattributed accounts of Vikings stealing shit to Vikings sexually assaulting women, instead.
Oh, well observed, Catalpa!
Reminds me of the common misinterpretation that “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” There were no fiddles in Rome, or any instrument like it. Nero fretted while Rome burned.
@Catalpa
There’s plenty of stories of Vikings attacking convents and brutalizing the residents after stealing all the valuables, but there’s also a long history of Christian writers straight up making shit up about how persecuted they are by heathens and infidels, (see: lions in the arena, 99% of hagiographies), so take that with a grain of salt. There’s no question that some Norsemen whose permanent residence was Scandinavia are recorded as having British or Irish wives, and slavery (thralldom) was practiced on a small scale in the Northlands, so there’s some indication that at least some of them didn’t want to be there. OTOH, increasing evidence is being uncovered that Viking expeditions were often mixed-gender affairs, and a lot of the time the women that norse men had sex with abroad were norse women who’d been along the whole time.
@Iseult
The accusation was originally that Nero played a lyre while Rome burned, being changed to a fiddle by people more familiar with that instrument. The same sources accuse him of being responsible for the fire. However, the surviving sources were all written well after the fact by people with axes to grind, and other sources indicate that Nero wasn’t even in Rome at the time, but hurried back from Antium to organize firefighting and relief efforts. Certainly policies were enacted afterwards to rebuild in a less fire-prone fashion (worth noting that, while the one in AD 64 was the worst, devastating fires were a fact of life in ancient Rome, and indeed large preindustrial cities generally).
@ Dalillama
Good points. I don’t doubt that there were instances of rape and slavery during raids. I was just questioning the idea that it was as prolific as the manosphere numbskulls seem to fantasize it being.
As far as I know, neither Brad Pitt nor Chris Hemsworth is a conqueror or rapist, so why use them as ‘alpha men’ like that? I mean, they’re actors. They pretend for a living. Not exactly Viking raiders, are they? They don’t fuck everything that moves either. Brad’s a serial monogamist, been with 2 women for as long as I’ve been aware of celebrity culture. Chris has been married for about 8yrs now too. So, they ain’t really PUAs. Why them then? Oh yeah, cos the manosphere thinks they’re hot. Which is fine obviously, them two are fine obviously. Just drop the evopsych. Women like them and not you, cos they’re pretty, have positive public personas (or at least Chris at this point), and aren’t writing these gross screeds. It ain’t that deep…
Gotta love how evopsychs, and ignorant people in general, think that the word “fittest” in “survival of the fittest” always refers to the biggest, strongest, and most aggressive members of a species. If that were true, the dinosaurs would never have gone extinct, nor would any of the megafauna of the Ice Age.
I don’t remember Brad Pitt ever partying and sleeping around. Unless it just never made the magazines. Before Jennifer Aniston he was serious with Gwenyth Paltrow and before that he was serious with Juliette Lewis. He’s been a serial monagamist since at least the early 90’s. As long as he’s been famous. I think right now might be the longest he’s ever been single. I also find it strange that they always use him as their alpha example. I’m assuming it’s because he played Tyler Durden and they’re assuming for some reason that he’s exactly like a fictional character that’s really a figment of another fictional character’s imagination.
I wonder if the RoK folks view Keith Raniere as a role model.
What, MRAs conflating actors with the characters they play? Say it ain’t so!
@Dalillama: Irate Social Engineer: thank you, that was interesting.
When Erik the Red, one of the tough bastards of history, moved to Iceland, his wife (Thjohildr) wanted a chapel (she was a Christian, he was not). He kept putting it off, so she said she wouldn’t sleep with him until it was built. He got it taken care of. You can still visit the ruins of the chapel.
Not the kind of domestic life these guys imagine ‘Vikings’ having.
The manospherian nightmare is one of being duped and conned by a clever woman, used by her more or less as breeding stock, then dumped and milked for resources by her and her kids. And yet, this could easily be interpreted, without too much stretching or tugging, as the only chance a man of modest intellect might have to mate with a smarter-than-average woman and to move his kids up on the IQ scale: IOW, his kids would benefit (especially as there’s some research which hints that to the extent that brains are heritable they’re especially heritable on the female side) even if he — personally — didn’t benefit at all. And yet one pretty much never hears this possibility alluded to on the manospherian sites, and one wonders why.
One of the chronicles of Byzantium records a relevant story. The throne guard of the Byzantine Empire were the Varangian Guards, originally Kievan Rus who had allied with the emperor through marriage. Eventually Norse fighters from as far as Iceland traveled to Byzantium to make a name for themselves. These guys were real deal “vikings”.
Anyways, the chronicle states that one of the norsemen assaulted a Greek woman, who managed to take up his spear and stabbed him in the heart. His comrades, on learning of his crime and death, awarded the woman his arms and belongings, as befit the victor in combat, and unceremoniously chucked his body off a cliff.
Actual Vikings, in an actual foreign culture, weren’t keen on raping.
@Bakunin,
@Podkayne Lives,
Those details are brilliant; thank you 🙂
@bekabot,
One does wonder, doesn’t one?
I always enjoy your posts, but this one is my new favourite.
Also, here are kittens being:
1. extremely bouncy and silly
https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/979676173016891392
2. extremely tiny and adorbs
https://twitter.com/awwcuteness/status/979892081744338944
From that same account, I really liked this one of a kittensquirrel
https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/979066904345227268
Murderous red mist, descending… must. look. at. Kittens!
@Fluffy Spider
http://media.giphy.com/media/NPWigaPMsBoGs/giphy.gif
If the claim wasn’t disgusting, it’d be hilarious because, as it happens, we have actual historical documents (and plenty of them, from many different sources) that tell us exactly why the Norse men were so popular with the ladies of the lands they visited… and that reason happens to be their dedication to hygiene and fashion:
Quote by John of Wallingford, who was a monk and a chronicle writer (the note was made after the St. Brice’s Day massacre of the Danes in 1002, during the reign of Ethelred the Unready)
And to counterbalance that last image, here’s one by Kate Beaton, who ruined Vikings forever for me as I now I can’t imagine them speaking any other way :-/
http://www.harkavagrant.com/history/lindisfarneredosm.png
Obviously the ROK poster has never been with a woman before. Im not going to lie Ive not been on a date before either. Difference is I dont write shite and I respect womens rights/choices
Current mood:
https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/977349798150983680
I expected a squirrel acting like a cat. Didn’t got it, but was still satisfied.
@Pie
Having been to Lindisfarne several times that comic made me chuckle. Thanks!
The “kittensquirrel” looked more to me like a small child in footy pajamas as (s)he patiently waited for a treat.